Push Past Negative Self-Talk: Give Yourself the Proper Fuel to Attack the World, with David Goggins, Former NAVY SealIf you've ever spent 5 minutes trying to meditate, you know something most people don't realize: that our minds are filled, much of the time, with negative nonsense. Messaging from TV, from the news, from advertising, and from difficult daily interactions pulls us mentally in every direction, insisting that we focus on or worry about this or that. To start from a place of strength and stability, you need to quiet your mind and gain control. For former NAVY Seal David Goggins, this begins with recognizing all the negative self-messaging and committing to quieting the mind. It continues with replacing the negative thoughts with positive ones.

Master Execution: How to Get from Point A to Point B in 7 Steps, with Rob Roy, Retired Navy SEALUsing the principles of SEAL training to forge better bosses, former Navy SEAL and founder of the Leadership Under Fire series Rob Roy, a self-described "Hammer", makes people's lives miserable in the hopes of teaching them how to be a tougher—and better—manager. "We offer something that you are not going to get from reading a book," says Roy. "Real leaders inspire, guide and give hope."Anybody can make a decision when everything is in their favor, but what happens in turbulent times? Roy teaches leaders, through intense experiences, that they can walk into any situation and come out ahead. In this lesson, he outlines seven SEAL-tested steps for executing any plan—even under extreme conditions or crisis situations.

"One of my tools as president was never to talk about change. People hate change.
But at MIT no one could deny you the opportunity to do an experiment."

"If we can create these spaces for convening around our most important problems,
We can make progress much faster than we can by insisting that people do the work on their own. And that's the power of the university at its best."

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"Are we in the best of times? Or the end of times? One of the oddities of the current era is that extreme pessimism about the world coexists with extreme optimism — and both have a plausible case to make."

I'm quoting Gideon Rachman from a recent Financial Times piece about Bill Gates and David Attenborough. Broadly speaking, Gates is a technooptimist: convinced, like his friend Steven Pinker, that the world's getting better all the time due to technological and scientific progress, and that our problems are largely solvable. Attenborough is the world's most recognizable narrator of nature documentaries and, well, with all that's been happening to the flora and the fauna of the Earth, you can probably guess where he stands.

My guest today, neuroscientist and MIT president emerita Susan Hockfield, is the author of the new book THE AGE OF LIVING MACHINES. And I think it's fair to say she leans toward the Bill Gates side of the spectrum. Given what she's seen and done in her historic career, it's easy to understand why. The technologies she looks at in the book sit at the intersection of biology and engineering—what Hockfield calls "Convergence 2.0". From water filters based on cellular proteins to self-assembling batteries, they seem miraculous, even to the trained eye. And they're densely packed with hope for human ingenuity, and for solving global problems from food shortages to climate change.

]]>Sat, 25 May 2019 12:00:11 +0000https://bigthink.com/podcast/extraordinary-machines-with-neuroscientist-susan-hockfieldJason GotsDepression is different for everyone. Here’s what it’s like for me.https://bigthink.com/videos/depression-is-different-for-everyone-heres-what-its-like-for-me

Everyone's experience with depression is different, but for comedian Pete Holmes the key to living with depression has been to observe his own thoughts in an impartial way.

Holmes' method, taught to him by psychologist and spiritual leader Ram Dass, is to connect to his base consciousness and think about himself and his emotions in the third person.

You can't push depression away, but you can shift your mindset to help better cope with depression, anxiety, and negative emotions. If you feel depressed, you can connect with a crisis counselor anytime in the US.

Current translators break down the translation process into three steps, based on converting the speech to text.

The new system uses machine learning to bypass the text representation steps, converting spectrograms of speech from one language into another language.

Although it's in early stages, the system can reproduce some aspects of the original speaker's voice and tone.

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Google's Translatotron is a new translation system that could soon be able to translate your speech into another language without losing key aspects of your voice and tone. The system is still in its early stages, but you can get an idea of how the technology might sound by listening to the audio samples below (around the 1:00 mark).

It's not a perfect reproduction, but Google suggests its new system could soon provide a far more seamless translation experience than current translators.

Such systems, like Google Translate, break down the translation process into three steps, as Google wrote in a blog post: "automatic speech recognition to transcribe the source speech as text, machine translation to translate the transcribed text into the target language, and text-to-speech synthesis (TTS) to generate speech in the target language from the translated text." The result is that your spoken words are converted to text, that text is converted into a different language, and then machine intelligence speaks your words in a different language.

Translatotron is different because it bypasses the intermediate text representation steps. Google accomplishes this by using a neural network to convert spectrograms of speech from one language into another language. (Spectrograms are visual representation of the spectrum of frequencies in a sound.)

"It makes use of two other separately trained components: a neural vocoder that converts output spectrograms to time-domain waveforms, and, optionally, a speaker encoder that can be used to maintain the character of the source speaker's voice in the synthesized translated speech," Google wrote in its blog post.

Google added that its new approach brings several advantages, including:

". . . faster inference speed, naturally avoiding compounding errors between recognition and translation, making it straightforward to retain the voice of the original speaker after translation, and better handling of words that do not need to be translated (e.g., names and proper nouns)."

Google is still working out the kinks in Translatotron (you can check out some of the system's less impressive translation efforts here.) But it's not hard to see how Translatotron could soon make foreign-language interactions run more smoothly, by capturing and reproducing some of the nuances that get lost when a robotic voice synthesizes text into speech.]]>Fri, 24 May 2019 19:13:03 +0000https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/translatotronAiSpeechTechnologyInnovationMachine learningStephen JohnsonThe surprising popularity of workplace choirshttps://bigthink.com/culture-religion/workplace-choirs

Workplace choirs are becoming increasingly popular in the U.K. and USA, particularly in companies such as Boeing, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google.

Proponents tout choirs as a way to avoid employee burnout, and the research seems to suggest they're right.

Singing in choirs comes with a slew of psychosocial benefits that can make the workday a little more bearable.

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In some workplaces, you might find yourself taking a break from filling out TPS reports to working on hitting the high notes of "Bohemian Rhapsody." More and more businesses are encouraging their employees to start work choirs to improve their physical and mental health and promote social cohesion.

It might seem like an odd solution, but workplace choirs are an effective response to employee burnout. A recent Gallup study found that 23 percent of employees feel burned out at work often or all the time, and another 44 percent feels burned out some of the time. Employees who feel burned out are more than twice as likely to actively seek out other employment and 63 percent more likely to take sick days. They're less confident in their performance, less likely to work with their managers toward goals, and more likely to visit the emergency room.

How did workplace choirs come to be and what are the benefits?

But why is singing being implemented as a solution to this? Part of the reason has to be attributed to the popularity of the 2012 British TV show, The Choir:Sing While You Work, in which choirmaster Gareth Malone trains amateur workplace-based choirs to compete against one another. Over time, more and more businesses in the U.K. began implementing workplace choirs, including Wellington Place's workplace choir in the video below.

Now, it's not just U.K.-based businesses that are assembling choirs. Boeing, Facebook, and LinkedIn all have their own choirs as well, and Google has its own a capella group called Googapella. The city of Cincinnati even has its own city-wide choir competition called CincySings that pits different company choirs together.

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Jordan Shue, a representative of Americans for the Arts, told the Chorus Connection blog that "[An employee choir] is a way to show employees that you value them and want them to have fun at work. It also challenges them to show their creative sides and work as a team on a project vastly different from what they do in the office day to day. That can have a huge impact on the way they work together in the future and how connected they feel to their company."

Research backs this up, too. Choirs have been shown to promote a sense of togetherness and social cohesion. Choral singing can be good for your heart as well and can even cause the heart rates of choral group members to rise and fall in tandem. Choirs reduce stress and depression, improve respiratory health and self-esteem, and stimulate cognition. And, crucially for the workplace, singing promotes social bonding.

There's a good reason why so many companies set time aside for often-underwhelming team-building exercises. Human beings can't simply spend 8 hours a day as robots; they need to bond with other human beings and be social. Doing so doesn't just make for happier workers, it also makes for more productive ones — both because of improved personal outcomes and because of the interpersonal connections that singing promotes.

Not a new idea

While implementing a choir in the workplace might seem like something of a fad or a product of a modern-day obsession with creating hip workplaces, singing at work is actually quite old — ancient, in fact. Musician Ted Gioia's book Work Songs explores the many different historical contexts where laborers sang during their work, whether that was enslaved plantation workers, miners, chain gangs, oyster shuckers, or any other kind of laborers.

"It made the work less arduous, it made the hours roll by," said Gioia. "It allowed them to have some sort of mastery over their work conditions, which were often very demeaning ones." Though one might make argue that this kind of hard labor differs significantly from the modern, sterile office, the rising rates of worker burnout belies that contrast and underscore the value of music in the workplace.

]]>Fri, 24 May 2019 19:12:15 +0000https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/workplace-choirsVocalsUnited statesSociologyPsychologyMusicPerformanceWorkMatt DavisBedbugs sucked blood in the age of dinosaurshttps://bigthink.com/surprising-science/bedbugs-dinosaurs

Scientists originally thought bedbugs evolved on bats roughly 50 million years ago.

New research used DNA to map the bedbug ancestry and found the species evolved as far back as the Cretaceous.

The researchers hope that understanding how bedbugs evolve will help us curb their ability to spread and transmit diseases to people.

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An international team of scientists have been on a quest. They have traveled to Africa, South America, and South East Asia. They have scaled cliff faces, explored shadow-stained caves, bushwhacked through sweltering jungles, and dodged dangerous wildlife. What treasure did they seek: a golden idol, an ancient codex, a city lost to time?

Nope. They endured all this to procure a blood-sucking parasite that most of us can't wait to be rid of: bedbugs. For 15 years, these scientists traveled the world collected specimens of the family Cimicidae. Their goal was to create a molecular phylogeny — essentially a bedbug ancestral tree mapped through DNA analysis.What they found surprised them.

Bedbugs: Our Mesozoic bedfellows

Bedbugs were previously thought to have evolved with bats, their most common, and long-assumed first, hosts. This origin story kick-starts the bedbug lineage roughly 50 million years ago.

To learn more about these infectious pests, researchers began collecting as many bedbug species they could. Natural history museums and colleagues donated some specimens, but others had to be obtained in the field.

Over the course of 15 years, the scientists traveled the world collecting bedbugs from their natural hosts. These travels took them in proximity to dangerous wildlife like buffalo and leopards, not to mention a few wadings through knee-high guano. In the end, they collected 34 Cimicidae species from 62 locations.

After mapping their molecular phylogeny, the team discovered that bedbugs evolved about 115 million years ago. This new lineage predates bats by about 50 million years, stretching back into the Cretaceous period. Bedbugs roamed the earth alongside dinosaurs such as Triceratops, Velociraptor, and Tyrannosaurs rex.

"To think that the pests that live in our beds today evolved more than 100 million years ago and were walking the earth side by side with dinosaurs was a revelation. It shows that the evolutionary history of bedbugs is far more complex than we previously thought," Professor Mike Siva-Jothy, study co-author from the University of Sheffield's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, said in a release.

This also means that bedbugs survived the K-T extinction event, the cataclysmic end of the Mesozoic era that saw the extinction of approximately 70 percent of all species living at the time, including, of course, dinosaurs. This puts bedbugs in league with nature's other K-T survivors and all-around badasses sharks, crocodiles, cockroaches, and the platypus.

Did bedbugs nosh on T-rex?

Probably not. While bedbugs evolved alongside the king of the thunder lizards, they likely didn't feed on its blood or any other dinosaur species. As the researchers point out, bedbugs and their relatives favor hosts who have "homes": birds with their nests, bats with their roosts, and humans with their beds. Dinosaurs likely employed a drifter lifestyle, and so wouldn't have been a favored host.

But if neither bats nor dinosaurs were the bedbug's original host, who was? We don't know. The species original host remains elusive.

If that answer is unsatisfactory, take heart that avian dinosaurs — or, as they are commonly known, birds — remain a potential candidate.

Others believe bats, or a bat ancestor, are still in the mix. "The fossil record for [both bed bugs and mammals] are patchy…that makes it hard to make definitive statements," Jessica Ware, an entomologist and evolutionary biologist at Rutgers University, told PBS. "It's possible bats are older, and we've just underestimated."

Evolving pest control

The researchers then used their data to explore the frequency at which bedbugs jump from one host to another. Broadly speaking, some bedbugs become specialized to a single host, but others are more generalized and able to jump between hosts.

The bedbugs that pester humans, Cimex lectularius and Cimex hemipterus, are just two of more than 100 Cimicidae species. These human-gorging bedbugs were thought to have diverged around the time our species entered the game of life — as is true of other human parasites such as lice.

However, the data showed that these bedbugs had evolved already, likely on bats. They opportunistically began snacking on slumbering humans when our species began using caves as dwellings. Throughout our shared history, a new bedbug species has jumped to human hosts about every 500,000 years. However, the way humans have reshaped our environments may speed up that pace.

"These species are the ones we can reasonably expect to be the next ones drinking our blood, and it may not even take half a million years, given that many more humans, livestock, and pets that live on earth now provide lots more opportunities," Professor Klaus Reinhardt, study co-led and bedbug researcher at Dresden University, said in the same release.

According to Siva-Jothy, the team hopes their findings will allow us to better understand the history and abilities of these pests. Understanding their evolution may help us control their ability to spread and transmit diseases to humans.

]]>Fri, 24 May 2019 15:18:49 +0000https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/bedbugs-dinosaursAnimalsBirdsBiologyDinosaursDiseaseDnaEvolutionInsectsKevin DickinsonNew AI can create fake videos of people from a single picturehttps://bigthink.com/technology-innovation/new-ai-can-create-fake-videos-of-people-from-a-single-picture

The model uses "single-shot learning" to create videos from a single picture.

The application of the tech could be in telepresence, video conferencing and gaming.

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An AI can now take a single picture of a person's face and animate it convincingly. This can lead to animating paintings and photos but also add to the mistrust of images and deepfakes online.

The new method from researchers at the Samsung AI Center in Moscow incorporates facial landmarks from a source face into the facial data from the target face to animate it. The target face will do anything done by the source face, which can be any talking head.

What is different here from previous technology that has been developed to achieve this is the fact that rather than needing a lot of data (like video) to analyze, this approach called "single-shot learning" needs just one image of a person's face. The video that is generated from that can show the face making a range of expressions and speaking with reasonable credibility.

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The new tech front loads the process of facial landmark recognition with a large amount of data from a bank of talking head videos. It then trains the model to be very efficient in connecting parts of the target face with the source.

The new AI also uses the Generative Adversarial Network, having two models compete against each other in creating a more "real" result.

Here’s how adversarial learning works:

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Where can you use this technology, other than contributing to the epidemic of fake news that is sure to eventually affect personal relationships as much as the national conversations? "Such ability has practical applications for telepresence, including videoconferencing and multi-player games, as well as [the] special effects industry," Samsung said.

Neuroscience and engineering are uniting in mind-blowing ways that will drastically improve the quality of life for people with conditions like epilepsy, paralysis or schizophrenia.

Researchers have developed a brain-computer interface the size of a baby aspirin that can restore mobility to people with paralysis or amputated limbs. It rewires neural messages from the brain's motor cortex to a robotic arm, or reroutes it to the person's own muscles.

Deep brain stimulation is another wonder of neuroscience that can effectively manage brain conditions like epilepsy, Parkinson's, and may one day mitigate schizophrenia so people can live normal, independent lives.

Results consistently showed that high-class people tend to overestimate their abilities.

However, this overconfidence was misinterpreted as genuine competence in one study, suggesting overestimating your abilities can have social advantages.

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People who come from high social classes are more likely to overestimate their abilities. That's not exactly shocking. But a new study reveals something a bit less intuitive: This overconfidence is often misinterpreted by others as genuine competence, even when the high-class individual is demonstrably average.

It's a phenomenon that could be perpetuating social hierarchies, and researchers suggest it might stem from high-class individuals' desire to gain social status.

This large field study involved about 151,000 small-business owners in Mexico who were applying for a loan. In what appeared to them to be part of the loan process, each applicant was asked to rate how well they think they performed compared to others on a memory game, designed to predict whether applicants will default on a loan. Results showed that higher-class people outperformed other groups, but not by as much as they thought they did.

Study 2 – Overconfidence and the desire to gain social rank

This experiment had several aims, but its main goal was to test whether the overconfidence of higher-class people is linked to a desire to rise in social rank. After submitting demographic and socioeconomic information, online participants took a test they were told would measure their mental abilities. Higher-class people were, again, more overconfident than others. But more importantly, according to the researchers, it showed that, "participants with relatively high social class had a stronger desire for social rank, which, in turn, was associated with more overconfidence."

Study 3 – Overconfident (and average) in trivia games

In this trivia-game experiment, higher-class people again overestimated their abilities compared to the rest of the participants. Study 3 also replicated the prior findings showing that high-class people have a stronger desire to climb the social ladder, a trait that's associated with more overconfidence.

Study 4 – Overconfidence pays out

This mock-interview experiment was designed to see whether overconfidence led to social advantages. The student participants were each videotaped as they answered one interview question. Then, a group of strangers evaluated each candidate. In general, high-class participants who were overconfident in their abilities were rated more favorably than their peers by independent judges. The implication: Overconfidence seems to pay out in the social world.

'Fake it 'til you make it'

So, do these results suggest you should "fake it 'til you make it"? Not quite. The researchers wrote that "overconfidence is believed to be a significant underlying cause for many organizational and societal catastrophes, such as wars, strikes, litigation, entrepreneurial failures, and stock market bubbles."

What's more, different cultures and social classes may have varying attitudes toward overconfidence, as lead study author Peter Belmi told The New York Times:

"I grew up in the Philippines with the idea that if you have nothing to say, just shut up and listen."

Abortion rights in the United States might be in for a bit of a reduction.

Many of the debates around abortion center around what rights, if any, a fetus should have.

If a fetus is a person, the question of if it would be a citizen seems quickly comes to mind.

With the recent spike in laws limiting abortion access in the United States recently, the debate over the future of abortion has been rekindled with a newfound seriousness. There is reason to believe that abortion rights may soon be reduced across the nation. Some of you will be elated to read that, others nauseated.

The question of what rights a fetus would be entitled to in a society where abortion is abolished is an important one, as it can have a significant impact on our debate. Today, we'll look at one part of that question. Specifically, if a fetus is deemed a person, would it also have citizenship?

Fetal Citizenship?

If a person is a person from the moment of conception onward, then why wouldn't they have citizenship rights granted to them right away? That seems like the intuitive line of thinking. Indeed, persons who have no citizenship, "stateless persons" as they are known, run into endless legal issues as a result of their status. Shouldn't this be prevented if a fetus is a person?

The question can quickly lead one down a rabbit hole of potentialities. Would a child conceived on American soil become an American? What if the parents were foreigners?

There is a surprising lack of information on this subject. Luckily, I was able to speak with Mr. Mike Gonidakis, the President of Ohio Right to Life, who was able to explain that I wasn't just looking in the wrong places.

He told me that the question of fetal citizenship "isn't on the radar" for any mainstream right to life organization and that over the past several years of working nothing of the kind had ever been so much as been proposed.

"Over the last 10 years we haven't introduced or seen any introduction of such a bill," he told me, in reference to legislation that would make the unborn citizens. I was left with no doubts as to the pragmatic motivation behind the lack of concern with the citizenship question by our conversation. As he explained, making it so the census counts the unborn would do little, in his eyes, to lower abortion rates by itself.

So, if a fetus is supposed to be a
person but doesn’t have the same rights as other people, like citizenship, how
does that work out?

As Mr. Gonidakis said, the concern of many pro-lifers is limited to protecting the unborn, not giving them the same rights as those who are born.

The idea that a fetus could be given rights without those rights being the same rights as are held by other people is not without precedent in the philosophy of rights. Several systems of human rights don't quite manage to give every human being the same rights despite their best efforts.

For example, James Griffin developed a system of human rights that is based around the human capacity for "normative agency," our ability to devise and act on a plan for our lives. He argues in his book that this means those with normative agency should have certain rights to liberty, autonomy, and welfare.

However, critics have pointed out that some humans don't have normative agency. Young children, those in vegetative states, the severely mentally disabled, and the senile, would be prime examples. In response, he bites the bullet and agrees that these individuals lack "human rights" but still have rights for other reasons. A child might lack the same rights as an adult, such as the ability to vote, but this isn't to say they don't have any rights.

One could easily view the lack of discussion around fetal citizenship the same way. The pro-life argument is one of granting the unborn certain rights, not all of the rights. In this case, a fetus would have, it seems, the "unalienable" right to life but little else. Another pair of sources I spoke with who wished to remain anonymous made similar arguments to this. One of them also pointed out that the 14th amendment, which covers citizenship, applies only to those who are born.

It is also worth saying that I was unable to find a single example of a country where abortion is or was illegal that granted citizenship to the unborn.

What would the pro-choice response to this be?

Just like the pro-life movement, the pro-choice side has many different stances that all agree on the single point that abortion should be legal in at least some cases. If you take the position that abortion should be permitted on the grounds of bodily autonomy, that is to say, that a woman has full rights to how her organs are used, then the citizenship question becomes irrelevant. No citizen has the rights to the use of another citizen's organs. That said, it could be argued that even if a fetus was a citizen that it would still have no right to use another person's body — no matter what other rights it might have.

This line of theoretical thought is academic though and should be taken with more than a grain of salt. Since nobody is seriously considering the issue, nobody has made an argument on why abortion should still be legal even if a fetus were a citizen.

Is fetal citizenship the next great debate in abortion policy? Are anchor embryos going to be a thing? Probably not, if the current trajectory of the pro-life movement is maintained. However, the discussion of what kind of rights, if any, a fetus is entitled too can inform our debate over the issue of abortion and perhaps help us to rise above the vitriol that often characterizes it.

The reason why most virtual assistants are female may stem from the fact that consumers generally prefer the female voice.

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From Siri to Alexa, or Cortana to Google, our virtual assistants almost always have a female persona. That's a problem, according to a new Unesco report, because it's reinforcing ideas that women are "obliging, docile and eager-to-please helpers," and it's baking gender biases into AI technology that's only going to become more ubiquitous in years to come.

The 145-page U.N. report – titled "I'd blush if I could", a response Siri once gave when called a slut – covers gender gaps in technology and science, taking issue with the submissive traits given to AI female personas.

"The assistant holds no power of agency beyond what the commander asks of it," the report states. "It honours commands and responds to queries regardless of their tone or hostility. In many communities, this reinforces commonly held gender biases that women are subservient and tolerant of poor treatment."

The report provides examples of how the virtual assistants respond to harassment.

"...in response to the remark 'You're a bitch', Apple's Siri responded: 'I'd blush if I could'; Amazon's Alexa: 'Well thanks for the feedback'; Microsoft's Cortana: 'Well, that's not going to get us anywhere'; and Google Home (also Google Assistant): 'My apologies, I don't understand'."

It also referenced a Quartz report showing that female virtual assistants seemed to respond differently to sexual advances depending on the gender of the commander, with statements like "'Oooh!'; 'Now, now'" to men, and responses like "I'm not THAT kind of personal assistant" to women.

"Siri's 'female' obsequiousness — and the servility expressed by so many other digital assistants projected as young women — provides a powerful illustration of gender biases coded into technology products," the report found.

Why are virtual assistants female?

Market research from Amazon and Microsoft suggests that consumers generally prefer the female voice in their virtual assistants.

Why was it a stronger choice? The answer could be because men and women both seem to think the female voice is "warmer," according to a 2008 study on how people respond to digital voices. Interestingly, the same study found that women showed stronger implicit preference for the female voice, while men showed a neutral implicit preference (and a strong explicit preference) for the female voice.

Of course, there could be cultural reasons that explain why we expect to hear a female persona occupy the role of an assistant.

"Asking that why it is that virtual assistants are assigned a female voice is almost like asking why there have traditionally been more female than male secretaries," psychologist Vinita Mehta told Forbes. "In society, it has so far been women who are assigned roles to help and support, which are traits that we look for in those we wish to have assist us."

But what about HAL 9000 or IBM's Watson? Why weren't these supercomputers given female voices? The answer might be that our preferences and expectations for digital voices vary depending on the task at hand.

"IBM's Watson, an AI of a higher order, speaks with a male voice as it works alongside physicians on cancer treatment and handily wins Jeopardy," wrote Chandra Steele for PCmag.com. "When choosing Watson's voice for Jeopardy, IBM went with one that was self-assured and had it use short definitive phrases. Both are typical of male speech — and people prefer to hear a masculine-sounding voice from a leader, according to research — so Watson got a male voice."

​'Closing the gap'

The new report aims to shed light on the gender gaps in technology, science and computer literacy.

"Today, women and girls are 25 per cent less likely than men to know how to leverage digital technology for basic purposes, 4 times less likely to know how to programme computers and 13 times less likely to file for a technology patent," the report states. "At a moment when every sector is becoming a technology sector, these gaps should make policy-makers, educators and everyday citizens 'blush' in alarm."

According to Allison Gardner, a co-founder of Women Leading in A.I., the bulk of the gender-bias problems in A.I. aren't intentional, but rather stem from a lack of awareness.

"It's not always malicious bias, it's unconscious bias, and lack of awareness that this unconscious bias exists, so it's perpetuated," Gardner told The New York Times. "But these mistakes happen because you do not have the diverse teams and the diversity of thought and innovation to spot the obvious problems in place."

Earlier in May, Melinda Gates echoed a similar sentiment to CNN's Poppy Harlow.

"I know what happened when the Constitution was written in this country and how long it took women to get the right to vote. And look where we are on race issues in this country," she told Harlow. "Do we really want to bake bias into artificial intelligence?"

]]>Thu, 23 May 2019 17:15:09 +0000https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/alexa-gender-biasTechnologyInequalityScienceGenderStephen JohnsonFruit juice can be twice as harmful as sodahttps://bigthink.com/surprising-science/fruit-juice-health

A new study finds that the risk of all-cause mortality from over-consumption of fruit juice is significant.

Other sugared beverages are still bad for you, but too much fruit juice is actually worse.

Fructose, real or natural, is still fructose and problematic.

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While fruit juice largely retains its reputation as a healthy thing for kids to drink, it's not exactly news that it can contain just as much sugar as sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) like soda. Savvy parents and caregivers know it should be dispensed only in moderation. Along with all that sugar, of course, come beneficial vitamins, and previous research has linked the antioxidants and flavonoids in orange juice, in particular, to preventing cancer. (Not everyone agrees that the value of antioxidants has been proven.) In addition, brains of all ages consume the lion's share of a body's available sugar for energy.

Now, however, a study published in Jama Network Open from Emory University, the University of Alabama, and Cornell University, finds that the consumption of fruit juice more than doubles the risk of "all-around mortality" over SSBs.

Comparing oranges to oranges

The study was concerned with the effect of fruit-juice consumption on "all-around mortality." Earlier studies have examined the possible link between juice consumption and risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD) such as dyslipidemia, diabetes, and obesity. So the current study's intent was to see whether or not juice consumption similarly increased the chance of mortality in general.

The data analyzed in the study was drawn from the nationwide REGARDS (REasons for Geographic And Racial Differences in Stroke) study and involved 13,440 adults with a mean age of 63.6. The cohort was 59.3 percent male/40.7 percent female, and 68.9 percent were non-Hispanic white. Seventy percent were technically overweight or obese.

REGARDS researchers re-interviewed subjects every 6 months until 2013, and mortality events were reported by family members and derived from private as well as public medical records. There were ultimately 1,000 all-cause deaths among participants, as well as 168 CHD-related deaths.

Subjects self-reported their previous years' consumption of SSBs — such as sodas, soft drinks, or fruit-flavored drinks — and naturally sweet 100 percent fruit juices. The possible responses ranged from "never" to "every day." They were also asked to report everything else they ate as a number of units or as portion sizes. The researchers then calculated the percentage of each participant's total energy (TE) consumption and the percentage of that was derived from SSBs or fruit juice. Official U.S. Dietary Guidelines, and those from the World Health Organization and the American Heart Association allowed the study's authors to classify these percentages as low (<5 percent), medium (5 – <10 percent), and high (≥10 percent).

Not so sweet

On average, participants got 8.4 percent of their energy from SSBs and juice — that's just below the high-consumption threshold. After making adjustments for other cardiovascular risk factors, those who ingested above 10 percent of their energy from SSBs and fruit drinks had a 44 percent greater risk of CHD mortality and 14 percent of all-cause mortality. Looking at fruit juice alone, though, left researchers with their conclusion that each additional 12 ounces above 10 percent of your TE raises your overall risk of dying by a whopping 24 percent. By comparison, SSBs increase it by 11 percent.

Oh, fructose

The main issue seems to be the digestion of fructose when too much juice is consumed. The researchers suggest, "The metabolism of fructose, which is unique from all other sugars, occurs unregulated and almost exclusively in the liver. Fructose consumption is known to alter blood lipid levels, markers of inflammation and blood pressure, while high glucose consumption has been associated with insulin resistance and diabetes, independent of weight status." In a commentary accompanying the study, experts from Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health note that "Although the sugar in 100 percent fruit juices is naturally occurring rather than added, once metabolized, the biological response is essentially the same."

What to do about this information

Other research has shown that a moderate level of juice consumption may lower one's risk of CHD problems. At the same time, the high level of sugar in juice will continue to pose a threat as a potential trigger for weight gain, diabetes, fatty liver disease, and other serious health issues.

The guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that juice intake be limited to:

4 to 6 ounces a day for children aged 1–6

8 ounces a day for children over 7, adolescents, and adults

In addition, the Academy recommends consuming only 100 percent fruit juice, without added sugar, in both standard beverages smoothies.

Religious diversity is the norm in American life, and that diversity is only increasing, says Eboo Patel.

Using the most painful moment of his life as a lesson, Eboo Patel explains why it's crucial to be positive and proactive about engaging religious identity towards interfaith cooperation.

The opinions expressed in this video do not necessarily reflect the views of the Charles Koch Foundation, which encourages the expression of diverse viewpoints within a culture of civil discourse and mutual respect.

]]>Thu, 23 May 2019 10:00:10 +0000https://bigthink.com/Charles-Koch-Foundation/stand-up-against-religious-discrimination-even-if-its-not-your-religionReligionDiversityUnited statesBuddhismChristianityIslamSelfIdentityCollaborationCommunityEboo PatelOver 40% of Americans now support some form of socialismhttps://bigthink.com/over-40-percent-of-americans-now-support-socialism

Socialism is experiencing a boom in support among Americans.

43% of Americans now view socialism as "a good thing".

There are also more people (51%) against socialism as political stances hardened.

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Are Americans more accepting of socialism? Once a political slur, socialism has come back into the public consciousness, bolstered by the appeal of popular politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who speak openly of their support for Democratic Socialism. An April 2019 poll from Gallup provided more evidence of socialism's growing base, showing that 43% of Americans now describe socialism as a "good thing".

The answer came in response to "Would some form of socialism be a good thing or a bad thing for the country as a whole?"

Compare the current support of over 40% of the population for some form of socialism to 25% who supported it in a 1942 Roper/Fortune survey – one of the oldest opinion measures we have on subject.

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The amount of people who don't like socialism has also grown. 51% of the polled thought socialism was a "bad thing" while only 40% thought so in 1942. The big difference also is that in the 1940's poll 34% had "no opinion" while in 2019, only 6% replied that way. Clearly, fewer are on the fence about how they feel and stances have hardened.

Why has the opinion of socialism changed through the years? For one, the Red Scare of the 40s and 50s is no longer there. Instead, Scandinavian countries are often brought up as examples of modern socialist societies.

Previous opinion polls also showed that more Americans (23%) now identify socialism with social equality rather than with government control over the means of production (17%). For comparison, in 1949, 34% of the polled defined socialism to mean government having control over business.

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Additionally, the group polled currently by Gallup had a larger percentage of people who thought there will be more socialist countries in the next 50 years – 29% in contrast to 14% in a 1949 survey.

On the flip side of this trend is the fact that more Americans seem to prefer that government stay out of healthcare and education – two big constituents of most socialist agendas. Only 41% would like to see more government involvement in higher education and 44% would want more fed control in healthcare.

On the whole, people also generally feel that the government already has more control than the free market over the U.S. economy, with 25% thinking that versus 18% who thought the free market was in command.

Capitalism Is in Trouble. Socialist Principles Can Save It.

]]>Wed, 22 May 2019 21:55:10 +0000https://bigthink.com/over-40-percent-of-americans-now-support-socialismCapitalismSocietyPoliticsEconomicsUnited statesHistoryGovernmentPaul RatnerMaps show how CNN lost America to Fox Newshttps://bigthink.com/strange-maps/cnn-fox-news

Map details dramatic shift from CNN to Fox News over 10-year period

Does it show the triumph of "fake news" — or, rather, its defeat?

A closer look at the map's legend allows for more complex analyses

Dramatic and misleading

Over the course of no more than a decade, America has radically switched favorites when it comes to cable news networks. As this sequence of maps showing TMAs (Television Market Areas) suggests, CNN is out, Fox News is in.

The maps are certainly dramatic, but also a bit misleading. They nevertheless provide some insight into the state of journalism and the public's attitudes toward the press in the US.

Let's zoom in:

It's 2008, on the eve of the Obama Era. CNN (blue) dominates the cable news landscape across America. Fox News (red) is an upstart (°1996) with a few regional bastions in the South.

By 2010, Fox News has broken out of its southern heartland, colonizing markets in the Midwest and the Northwest — and even northern Maine and southern Alaska.

Two years later, Fox News has lost those two outliers, but has filled up in the middle: it now boasts two large, contiguous blocks in the southeast and northwest, almost touching.

In 2014, Fox News seems past its prime. The northwestern block has shrunk, the southeastern one has fragmented.

Energised by Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, Fox News is back with a vengeance. Not only have Maine and Alaska gone from entirely blue to entirely red, so has most of the rest of the U.S. Fox News has plugged the Nebraska Gap: it's no longer possible to walk from coast to coast across CNN territory.

By 2018, the fortunes from a decade earlier have almost reversed. Fox News rules the roost. CNN clings on to the Pacific Coast, New Mexico, Minnesota and parts of the Northeast — plus a smattering of metropolitan areas in the South and Midwest.

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"Frightening map"

This sequence of maps, showing America turning from blue to red, elicited strong reactions on the Reddit forum where it was published last week. For some, the takeover by Fox News illustrates the demise of all that's good and fair about news journalism. Among the comments?

"The end is near."

"The idiocracy grows."

"(It's) like a spreading disease."

"One of the more frightening maps I've seen."

For others, the maps are less about the rise of Fox News, and more about CNN's self-inflicted downward spiral:

"LOL that's what happens when you're fake news!"

"CNN went down the toilet on quality."

"A Minecraft YouTuber could beat CNN's numbers."

"CNN has become more like a high-school production of a news show."

Not a few find fault with both channels, even if not always to the same degree:

"That anybody considers either of those networks good news sources is troubling."

"Both leave you understanding less rather than more."

"This is what happens when you spout bullsh-- for two years straight. People find an alternative — even if it's just different bullsh--."

"CNN is sh-- but it's nowhere close to the outright bullsh-- and baseless propaganda Fox News spews."

"Old people learning to Google"

But what do the maps actually show? Created by SICResearch, they do show a huge evolution, but not of both cable news networks' audience size (i.e. Nielsen ratings). The dramatic shift is one in Google search trends. In other words, it shows how often people type in "CNN" or "Fox News" when surfing the web. And that does not necessarily reflect the relative popularity of both networks. As some commenters suggest:

"I can't remember the last time that I've searched for a news channel on Google. Is it really that difficult for people to type 'cnn.com'?"

"This is a map of how old people and rural areas have learned to use Google in the last decade."

"This is basically a map of people who don't understand how the internet works, and it's no surprise that it leans conservative."

A visual image as strong as this map sequence looks designed to elicit a vehement response — and its lack of context offers viewers little new information to challenge their preconceptions. Like the news itself, cartography pretends to be objective, but always has an agenda of its own, even if just by the selection of its topics.

The trick is not to despair of maps (or news) but to get a good sense of the parameters that are in play. And, as is often the case (with both maps and news), what's left out is at least as significant as what's actually shown.

One important point: while Fox News is the sole major purveyor of news and opinion with a conservative/right-wing slant, CNN has more competition in the center/left part of the spectrum, notably from MSNBC.

Another: the average age of cable news viewers — whether they watch CNN or Fox News — is in the mid-60s. As a result of a shift in generational habits, TV viewing is down across the board. Younger people are more comfortable with a "cafeteria" approach to their news menu, selecting alternative and online sources for their information.

]]>Wed, 22 May 2019 20:00:10 +0000https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/cnn-fox-newsInternetJournalismMediaNewsUnited statesFrank JacobsHow to change the mind of an anti-vaxxerhttps://bigthink.com/surprising-science/vaccinations

Talking to people who have experienced vaccine-preventable diseases changes minds.

Seventy percent of Brigham Young University students shifted their vaccine-hesitant stance.

This research arrives during a year in which 880 measles cases have been identified in America.

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There is no greater teacher than experience — or the experience of others, it turns out. Educating the anti-vaxx population has proven to be challenging, yet a new intervention conducted by researchers at Brigham Young University appears to work: introduce anti-vaxxers to people who have suffered from vaccine-preventable diseases.

The study, published in the journal Vaccines, was conducted with college students in Provo, Utah, a city with the sixth-highest number of under-vaccinated kindergartners. Of the 574 student volunteers, 491 were pro-vaccine and 83 were vaccine-hesitant.

Half of these students interviewed someone who had suffered from a vaccine-preventable disease (such as polio); the control group interviewed people who had lived through autoimmune diseases. Simultaneously, some students were enrolled into classes featuring immune- and vaccine-related curriculum, while others received no vaccine training in the health class.

The following questions were asked before their interviews:

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And these were the questions were asked to the interview subject:

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Finally, the students were asked a longer set of questions after their research, including whether vaccines, treatment for autoimmune diseases, and depression medications are "more harmful than helpful"; if vaccines cause autism; how hearing about the vaccine-preventable disease changed their views on vaccines; and how much financial impact affected their thoughts on treatment. Finally, researchers wanted to know if the study changed their feelings on vaccines.

"Vaccines are victims of their own success. They're so effective that most people have no experience with vaccine preventable diseases. We need to reacquaint people with the dangers of those diseases."

By the end of the study, around 70 percent of vaccine-hesitant students reassessed their position, even with no vaccine class training. Learning about the suffering of others shifted their perspective, as one student, who interviewed her grandmother (who had suffered from tuberculosis), put it:

"I dislike the idea of physical suffering, so hearing about someone getting a disease made the idea of getting a disease if I don't get vaccinated seem more real."

A full three-fourths of the vaccine-hesitant students increased their "vaccine attitude scores," with half of them moving fully to the pro-vaccine side. While the educational curriculum was important, the biggest change occurred when students talked to those that had suffered from vaccine-preventable diseases.

The Journey of Your Child’s Vaccine

This research is especially important as this year's measles outbreak has risen to 880 cases, with the largest number hitting Orthodox Jewish communities in New York. Undeterred, anti-vaxxer activists are comparing forced vaccinations to Nazi Germany, spreading blatantly false information to confused parents.

Yesterday, the New York Times editorial board called for the State of New York to end the religious exemption for vaccines. Exceptions should be made if the health of the child is endangered, as current law dictates. Considering 41 cases were diagnosed last week — 30 in New York alone — the board states this is not the time for legislation to be paused in the courts. Religious belief, they write, does not give anyone the right to infect other members of society.

With so much misinformation circulating since the infamous, discredited autism-vaccine study (though anti-vaccine activism existed before that day), the researchers at BYU might have hit upon an important antidote. As Poole concludes:

"If your goal is to affect people's decisions about vaccines, this process works much better than trying to combat anti-vaccine information. It shows people that these diseases really are serious diseases, with painful and financial costs, and people need to take them seriously."

]]>Wed, 22 May 2019 17:39:13 +0000https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/vaccinationsBiologyPublic healthHealthPsychologyReligionVaccinesDerek BeresNot having children is another choice we should be discussinghttps://bigthink.com/culture-religion/children

Maxine Trump's forthcoming documentary, To Kid Or Not To Kid, investigates why women choose not to have children.

Twenty percent of women are making this choice, Trump says, which is not a small minority.

Climate change and an inability to find a suitable partner are top reasons for this decision.

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In 2015, Pope Francis stated that a society that does not surround itself with children is "depressed," calling couples choosing not to procreate "selfish." He followed that up by claiming that societies that multiply are "enriched, not impoverished." Perhaps he hasn't checked out the American public education system lately.

Ol' Frank isn't alone in this assessment. Numerous countries are concerned about dwindling populations, making economic arguments about why their nations' women better get to work (in bed). Never mind that global overpopulation — we've doubled our number in the last half-century alone — is draining the planet of resources and destroying ecosystems and species. Capitalism demands exponential growth.

Maxine Trump cringes when I mention the economic argument for procreation. The director of the forthcoming documentary, To Kid Or Not To Kid, has spent the last few years researching and filming women who choose not to procreate. While a variety of reasons for such a decision exist, Trump finds the financial philosophy disturbing:

"The economic arguments don't make sense. We interviewed an economist in the film that agrees with that. He's right at the end of the film, so I don't want to give away too much, but he doesn't sign up to the economic driver argument. Right now, you probably don't know how many things you are using that are made by robots. How are we going to actually have a meritocracy where people can actually afford to live? Let's think about that for a second."

Trump — "no relationship" declares her email signature — is already witnessing people feeling the economic pinch in a world with too many citizens struggling to capture a tiny slice of the pie. Money, she assures me, is not the only reason couples are choosing to live without children.

To Kid or Not To Kid - Kickstarter

Having cut her teeth as a development executive for scripted comedy at the BBC, Trump takes a humorous approach to this contentious topic. Now calling Brooklyn home, she discovered that a child-free existence is a cross-cultural topic. When I ask if she's ever been called "selfish," she tells me the story of a nun she interviewed who chose her vocation for that very reason. While a convent isn't in Trump's future, she shared common ground with this devotee.

Trump has, in fact, been called selfish, an interesting charge made by an animal that will soon be responsible for the extinction of a million species of other animals. Earlier this year, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez caused a conservative ruckus when asking if childbearing is still acceptable in the age of climate change. Trump says AOC's argument for not having kids is one reason of many.

"You have to ask, 'Why is this deemed an unpopular choice?" she says. "Twenty percent of women choose not to have children now. I find it strange that people like to present this as being an outsider view."

According to Trump's research, a whopping 45 percent of pregnancies are unplanned. The word "choice" comes up a lot during our talk, which isn't surprising given the recent spate of states attempting to dismantle abortion rights. As the film makes its way around the festival circuit, Trump is specifically traveling to states that recently passed anti-abortion legislation. Surprisingly, just realizing that a child-free lifestyle is possible stuns a lot of women.

"It's very difficult when the choice has been taken away from you. What we really talk about in the film is believing you have a choice," Trump says. "Some women I've interviewed didn't know that they could decide not to have children. They honestly responded to me saying, 'I didn't even know it was a choice I could make.'"

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Which brings me to religion, as well as even touchier topics, such as parents that are not economically prepared to have children doing so anyway. At every turn, Trump states that she tried really hard to not judge any decisions made by other women. Isn't unwarranted judgment at the heart of this film to begin with?

It's not necessarily the religious, she follows, but parents of large families that seem most likely to criticize others for not bearing children. As recent research suggests, however, selfishness is not at the heart of the no-children decision. A study of healthy, egg-freezing women in the U.S. and Israel discovered the number one reason is "lack of a partner." There are many intelligent and committed men out there — but not enough, it seems.

Procreation is how we perpetuate the species. Yet humans are unique on this planet. Given the opportunity, every animal will multiply like crazy. Take Australian rabbits and feral cats, jellyfish in warming oceans. Biology dictates survival at all costs.

Our unique attribute is metacognition: I am aware that I am aware. The perplexing problem at the heart of the human condition: an innate impulse to procreate even while recognizing the danger it presents. Our lifestyles are threatening all existence on this planet, yet if we take precautions we could be the species that saves itself from itself. "Let this cup pass from me," followed by the realization that we're also pouring the wine. Biology and philosophy have rarely battled so tirelessly.

Regardless of the choices we make, Trump hopes women maintain the right to choose in the first place. If that decision turns out to be "nay" on procreation, then it shouldn't be judged as weird or selfish, but just as another means for experiencing life. Mostly, she made this film to let others know they're not alone in their decision.

"People like to feel safe. Safety is deemed by not making the unpopular choice. I just wish it wasn't hard like that. That's really what the film is trying to get across: 'Hey, we're out here.'"

]]>Wed, 22 May 2019 16:49:21 +0000https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/childrenWomenWork-life balanceRelationshipsFeminismReligionParentingDerek BeresGeneration Z is just entering the workforce. Here's how to work with them.https://bigthink.com/big-think-edge/generation-z

Generational differences always pose a challenge for companies.

How do you integrate the norms and expectations of the new generation with those of the old?

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt points out that Gen Z—the cohort born after 1995—differs sharply from the Millennial generation before it and offers some advice for understanding and working with a generation in some ways more sheltered and less independent than any before it.

]]>Wed, 22 May 2019 15:24:47 +0000https://bigthink.com/big-think-edge/generation-zBig think edgeJonathan HaidtThere's a happiness crisis in the modern workplace. Here's what to do about it.https://bigthink.com/big-think-edge/happiness-work

There's a crisis in the workplace. According to a 2016 Gallup Poll, 70% of people are disengaged at work. And a whopping 18% are actively repulsed by what they do for a living.

This is clearly no good for the workers themselves. But it's also no good for the companies they serve.

What makes us happy is fairly well understood, as is the fact that happy workers work harder, make fewer mistakes, and invest creative energy in making companies successful.

Moral grandstanding is the use of moral talk for self-promotion. Moral grandstanders have egotistical motives: they may want to signal that they have superhuman insight into a topic, paint themselves as a victim, or show that they care more than others.

Moral philosophers view moral grandstanding as a net negative. They argue that it contributes to political polarization, increases levels of cynicism about moral talk and its value in public life, and it causes outrage exhaustion.

Grandstanders are also a kind of social free rider, says Brandon Warmke. They get the benefits of being heard without contributing to any valuable discourse. It's selfish behavior at best, and divisive behavior at worst.

Mother bonobos have been observed to help their sons find and copulate with mates.

The mothers accomplish this by leading sons to mates, interfering with other males trying to copulate with females, and helping sons rise in the social hierarchy of the group.

Why do mother bonobos do this? The "grandmother hypothesis" might hold part of the answer.

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Like mother, like monkey.

Bonobo mothers, it turns out, can also be quite pushy in their quest to become grandmothers, according to a new study published in the journal Current Biology. The study describes how male bonobos are more likely to mate if their mothers are living in the group (so living near mom turns out to be a pretty good mating strategy for male bonobos).

The discovery originated among researchers observing bonobos in Africa. They noticed that older females in the group would involve themselves in relationships between male and female bonobos, particularly when it came to mating.

"I just wondered, 'What is it of their business?'" study author Martin Surbeck, Ph.D. told Inverse. "This all made more sense once we found out via genetic analysis that they were mothers of some of the adult males involved."

These would-be bonobo grandmothers push things along by leading their sons toward females in heat, protecting their sons from competing males during copulation, and they "form coalitions with their sons to help them acquire and maintain high dominance rank," the researchers wrote.

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The same, however, is not true for chimpanzees. Researchers who observed chimps in Côte d'Ivoire, Tanzania and Uganda found that male chimpanzees whose mothers were present during mating attempts were actually less likely to succeed in having offspring. One possible reason: bonobos live in matriarchal societies while chimpanzees live in groups where all females are subordinate to all males.

"Such maternal behavior is more likely to be effective in bonobos, where the sexes are co-dominant and the highest ranks are consistently occupied by females, than in chimpanzees, where all adult males are dominant over all females," the researchers wrote. "We found that bonobo males with a mother living in the group at the time of the conception were about 3 times (odds ratio: 3.14) more likely to sire offspring than males that did not."

​The grandmother hypothesis

One explanation for why female primates experience menopause is called the "grandmother hypothesis". Instead of using precious energy to continually have children of their own, especially given long periods of gestation and child-rearing, aging females may be ahead to encourage their offspring to have children of their own. The researchers aren't exactly sure the grandmother hypothesis explains the pushy-mother behavior within bonobo societies, but it might be part of the story.

"The interesting twist is that in humans, [the hypothesis] was originally thought to happen through support of their daughters, while in bonobos it is through the sons," Surbeck told The Washington Post.

For the most effective learning sessions, build-in short rest periods.

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It's been believed for some time that resting, ideally sleeping, after learning something new helps you lock in your newly acquired knowledge. Now a study finds that even short breaks can be beneficial. It's a fascinating study that suggests that we don't improve as we practice, but rather during the breaks we take.

Type '4-1-3-2-4', coneheads!

In a study from the National Institutes of Health – led by Marlene Bönstrup, a post-doc in the lab of Leonard G. Cohen – the brain waves of 27 healthy volunteers were monitored as they practiced typing 4-1-3-2-4 as fast as they could for 10 seconds using only their left hand, and then resting for 10 seconds. They did this 36 times. Long, cone-shaped, magnetoencephalography brain-scanning caps they wore allowed researchers to record their brain activity.

Speed gains

As you might expect, subjects' speeds improved with practice up through the 11th trial, starting out at about one key per second and topping out at about 3.5 keys per second. No further gain in speed was seen in trials 12-36.

When the researchers looked more closely at the participants' improvements, they noticed something surprising. On average, subjects performed at the same speed throughout each trial. It was only between trials — as they rested — that they got faster. By the time the next trial began, their speed had improved.

Neural evidence

"I noticed that participants' brain waves seemed to change much more during the rest periods than during the typing sessions," Bönstrup tells the NIH. "This gave me the idea to look much more closely for when learning was actually happening. Was it during practice or rest?"

The scans suggested that the phenomenon has to do with 16-22Hz beta waves in the frontoparietal area of the brain. These waves are associated with someone planning movement, and, indeed, when subjects rested, the researchers saw changes in the amplitude of these waves that suggest their brains were solidifying memory and getting ready to type faster. It was also apparent that most of this occurred in the right hemisphere of a participant's brain, which is associated with the left hand.

While the study was concerned with the learning of motor skills, the finding may be more broadly applicable, and further research will be required. "Whether these results apply to other forms of learning and memory formation remains an open question," says Cohen.

In any event, the study has intriguing implications for learning in a variety of settings. As Cohen says,"Our results suggest that it may be important to optimize the timing and configuration of rest intervals when implementing rehabilitative treatments in stroke patients or when learning to play the piano in normal volunteers."

Another intriguing offline idea

Neuroscientists have been looking closely at our mechanisms for learning, and there's been a lot of interest in the interplay between active thinking and learning and what your brain does while — on a conscious level anyway — you're resting or sleeping.

Barbara Oakley, author of Mindshift, refers to your brain as having two distinct circuits for these two states. In her Big Think Edge video, "Breaking Through Learning Obstacles: Activate Your Neural Networks," she explains how they work together as you acquire new knowledge.

The focus neural network — This is the neural network you employ when you're concentrating on a problem you're deliberately trying to solve.

The diffuse neural network — This is a neural network that can continue to work on a problem in the background as you're consciously thinking about other things.

Being laser-focused on a problem isn't always the best way to arrive at its solution. By allowing yourself a chance to process, your brain has time to creatively work through the problem while its offline. "You relax, you go off for a walk, you take a shower," as Oakley says. Often, when you once again focus, you'll find the solution magically presents itself. ]]>Tue, 21 May 2019 20:04:41 +0000https://bigthink.com/mind-brain/learning-neuroscienceBrainMemoryNeuroscienceHackTeachingProductivityLearningRobby BermanIn Sweden you can roam anywhere you like, without the landowner's permissionhttps://bigthink.com/culture-religion/right-to-roam

The custom dates from mediaeval times, but was only passed as law in parliament in 1974, and enshrined in the Swedish constitution in 1994. Authorities can even force landowners to remove any fence in place which has the sole purpose of obstructing public access to a recreation area.

There are sensible exceptions. You cannot enter private gardens or cultivated land, nor can you camp within 70 metres of a dwelling place, or exploit the countryside for economic purpose, such as hunting and logging.

People are obliged to take care of the nature they enjoy, and respect others they meet. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has popularized the slogan 'don't disturb, don't destroy', a variation on the 'leave no trace' tagline found elsewhere.

Several other countries ensure similar freedoms, including the rest of the Nordic countries (though Denmark has some restrictions on private land), several Baltic states, Scotland and Austria. By contrast, many countries have restrictions on access to public land. In England for example, walkers are generally allowed to cross privately owned moors, heaths and coastal land, but not forests. In the US, property rights allow landowners to exclude others. And Northern Ireland has "draconian" access rights, according to the Chairman of the Ulster Federation of Rambling Clubs (UFRC).

Access to nature can be key to a population's health, both in terms of encouraging an active lifestyle and for the soothing powers of the great outdoors. Japan has designated "therapy forests" where people are encouraged to go "forest bathing," while doctors in Scotland are prescribing outdoor activities to help tackle a range of conditions. Medical research has linked time spent in nature with everything from reduced depression to improved immune systems.

Producing emotional tears is a uniquely human thing and yet, for many, our first reaction to crying is to apologise.

Public displays of crying and emotional release, especially of emotions deemed as unattractive like being upset or angry, remain taboo. This is because there are socially accepted rules that govern the way we feel things. These “feeling rules" guide the types of emotions and feelings deemed appropriate to display at certain times and places.

These rules tell us that is it acceptable to cry at funerals, but not necessarily at pop concerts. Equally, such rules have often stereotyped certain cultures and genders into particular norms. So feeling rules tend to dictate that men must show greater restraint in expressing their emotions publicly.

The pressure of fast-paced, 24/7 societies has created a deficiency of times and places to release emotion. And into this emotional void a marketplace has sprung up to provide people with places where they can safely vent.

Japan is at the forefront of this. The Japanese, often stereotyped as emotionless, have found ways to cater to a growing demand for emotional release. In response to the stresses of everyday life particularly among women, hotels launched so-called Crying Rooms. These made-to-order rooms come complete with weepy movies, a cozy atmosphere and tissues on surplus, with the aim of providing women a time and space where they can privately release their upset and tears, free from society's judgement and gaze.

The Japanese company Ikemeso Danshi is even building a reputation for its cry-therapy services, during which customers watch emotive short films under the guidance of a “tear courier". In a culture where crying in front of others is taboo, the cathartic benefits of group crying brings stress relief and relaxation, leading many Japanese companies to embrace the service as a useful team-building exercise.

But it's not just Japan that has an emotional release industry. Cities around the world have seen the launch of anger rooms that provide a designated and safe space for customers to release rage through destroying objects. The recently launched Rage Club in London is a monthly event marketed as a game where participants “play with different practices to embody, enjoy and express rage". The Wreck Room lets you just smash things up in a room on your own.

For some, these services will represent the unwelcome commercialisation of human interaction and fundamental needs. Others will welcome them as a therapeutic experience.

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Judgement-free environment

A commonality across these services is that they are an opportunity to release emotions in a judgement-free environment, with like-minded others. These are the key features of our new concept entitled Therapeutic Servicescapes, which outlines how service providers can build an environment where people can healthily release their emotions. Our research was based on a three-year study of the Catholic sanctuary of Lourdes in France. We uncovered three key features that help produce a setting where particular emotions are permitted and released. These features involve:

1) A space that's designed to stimulate particular emotions.

2) Like-minded beliefs provide a sense of safety, security and acceptance of the behaviour and emotions of others.

3) An escape from the dominant cultural feeling rules.

We found that these features catalysed emotional release, which boosted people's emotional well-being. While many of the Japanese services outlined above are aimed at women, our research found the therapeutic environment at Lourdes was crucial to both men and women. Many of the men we spoke to saw it as a safe space, where they could release emotions and cry, free from judgement and stigma. This acceptance of crying, people told us, contrasted with their home cultures that they described as "emotionally straightjacketed".

The value of this kind of service space is evident, especially at a time when society faces a mental health crisis, with men often worse affected by the inability to talk about or release their emotions. Suicide is the number one cause of death for men under 50 in the UK and suicide rates among US men is four times higher than women. Our study shows the importance of creating spaces where men can open up about their feelings, free from the usual societal pressures that stop them from expressing their emotions.

The health and wellness industry is expected to grow to £632 billion globally by 2021, with more and more people spending money on healthy eating, exercise and activities that help their mental health. We see the appeal of services that promote emotional release as a relatively untapped but growing segment of this burgeoning industry.

]]>Tue, 21 May 2019 18:29:49 +0000https://bigthink.com/personal-growth/rage-roomsEmotionsMindfulnessBusinessMental healthLeighanne HigginsKathy HamiltonPerfectionism is on the rise – and we're all paying the costhttps://bigthink.com/personal-growth/perfectionism

A study of 41,641 college students shows that perfectionism is increasing year after year.

Along with perfectionist tendencies, researchers noted a symmetrical rise in anxiety, depression, and suicide.

The study looks not at parental influence, but at neoliberal policies that have fostered a cult of individualism.

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Should we really be surprised by a study entitled, "Perfectionism Is Increasing Over Time?" Though written in 2017, this research from Thomas Curran and Andrew P. Hill was recently republished by the American Psychological Association. Though previous surveys have mentioned "authenticity" as a defining feature of the target age group—millennials—it's hard to imagine an absence of mimicry given our social media environment.

This research is unique in approach. The team opens with a discussion of neoliberal governance being responsible for creating the conditions for rampant individualism to spread. An unchecked free market is placing undue stress on younger generations, forcing them to battle for screen space on a regular basis. Sleep becomes impossible when the entire planet is your schoolyard.

While the correlates and consequences of perfectionism are well-documented, the authors believe less research exists on the cultural conditions that fertilize it. Most research deals with parental and immediate environmental influences, not the governing economic and cultural forces. They consider perfectionism "a cultural phenomenon," and treat it as such.

"In its broadest sense, then, perfectionism can be understood to develop through the messages that young people internalize from their immediate social environments, the resulting view of themselves, especially how they construe self-worth and how it is established, and their sense of self in relation to others."

While this line of thought might be new to studies on perfectionism, differences between communal and individualist societies are understood. Better or worse is not the point of this work. Pressures associated with first thinking of yourself instead of your group have grave consequences on your mental health. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are all increasing in this younger cohort.

The Problem With Perfectionism

The authors define perfectionism as "excessively high personal standards and overly critical self-evaluations." They employ a cross-temporal meta-analysis of American, Canadian, and British college students' replies to the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale. Totaling 41,641 students between 1989 and 2016, three types of perfectionism were considered:

Self-oriented perfectionists are irrational in their self-importance while holding unrealistic expectations of themselves, punishing themselves when they can't meet their own self-imposed impossible standards.

Socially prescribed perfectionists feel consistently and harshly judged by others, forcing them to seek approval at every turn.

Other-oriented perfectionists impose unrealistic standards on everyone else and act out when these standards are not met.

Self-oriented perfectionism is considered the most complex. They base self-worth on achievements. Satisfaction never comes. Over the long run, clinical depression, eating disorders, and early death are a few of the results.

Socially prescribed perfectionism is the most debilitating, resulting in major bouts of anxiety and depression; it can lead to suicide when unchecked.

Other-oriented perfectionism is the least studied. Recent research ties it to higher levels of vindictiveness, hostility, and a tendency to blame others for, well, everything, but mostly for personal shortcomings. Low levels of altruism, compliance, and trust follow, as well as, in relationships, more fighting and less sexual satisfaction.

Curran and Hill attribute three cultural changes as catalysts for widespread increase in perfectionist tendencies:

The emergence of neoliberalism and competitive individualism.

The rise of the doctrine of meritocracy.

Increasingly anxious and controlling parental practices.

In a neoliberal environment, levels of narcissism, extraversion, and self-confidence increase as communal traits spiral. Collectively, we've become less caring about the welfare of others, while blaming others has gone through the roof. Ironically, we didn't need a study for this. We only need Twitter.

These trends are apparent in influencer culture, where a premium is placed on experiences, many of which are fabricated to begin with. This glorification of experience is why recent generations spend more money on status possessions and image goods well above their parents and grandparents. Add a dash of FOMO for a toxic cocktail.

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As we've known since biblical times (and likely before), more stuff equals less satisfaction. Our impatience with stuff translates into dissatisfaction with self. Cortisol boils.

"Yet rather than alleviate presentational and interpersonal anxieties, studies indicate that exposure to others' perfect self-representations within social media can intensify one's own body image concerns and sense of social alienation."

One real-world example: The UK has experienced a 30 percent increase in body dysmorphia and eating disorders in young girls since the advent of social media.

In a meritocracy, those with the highest status and most possessions are treated as winners, though little information about their prior conditions is shared. We only see the lifestyle, not the trust fund; we don't know what clothing gets shipped back to the rack. A pompous display: those with less feel less deserving. Material wealth is too often linked with low self-esteem.

Not only is the schoolyard infected, but so is the classroom. Teens are being taught that an education is designed to make money, not to enrich their lives and deepen their knowledge. American society no longer rewards the culture it created—wage premiums associated with degrees have stagnated for the last 20 years—yet we're left with the mental weight of school as a means of financial success, or, as it goes, "getting ahead."

This translates into parents—part of the neoliberal, meritocratic groundswell—transferring their own failed expectations onto the shoulders of their children. The youth internalize these pressures. Parents spend far more time today than a few decades ago focusing on educational endeavors and far less time on leisure and hobbies.

"Should a young person be unable to navigate an increasingly competitive social milieu, then it is not just their failure, it is also the parents' failure too."

Interestingly, American students showed higher levels of self-oriented perfectionism and lower levels of socially prescribed perfectionism. This is, in part, due to shrinking budgets for communal-oriented funding faster than other countries. Regardless of geography, all three cohorts claim to be victims of demanding social expectations.

The kids are not alright. Neither are the parents.

It's always been nature and nurture. While parental influences are powerful, this research shows how forceful the weight of society is on our outlook. Just as anti-Semitism is rising in a populist-focused America, the endless barrage of people (seemingly) having more fun and stuff than you is taking its toll. The screen is a mirror of failed expectations and we're all paying the price.

]]>Tue, 21 May 2019 15:52:46 +0000https://bigthink.com/personal-growth/perfectionismDepressionHappinessMotivationSuicidePsychologyFailureDerek BeresFlorida's higher education system ranks best in the nationhttps://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/best-higher-education

Florida may be the butt of many jokes, but its higher education system is second to none.

However, the state's PreK-12 education lacks comparatively, giving Massachusetts the top spot for the best education overall.

Americans believe their state governments should prioritize education, but much work needs to be done to catch up to other countries.

Comedian John Oliver summed up how other states feel about their southern kin best when he said: "I mean come on, Florida. You're Florida!"

But the Sunshine State deserves more respect in the eyes of the other states. According to the U.S. News & World Report's 2019 Best States ranking, Florida has the best higher education system in the nation and one of the best education systems overall.

Florida #1 in higher education

The U.S. News & World Report's annual ranking compares states based on eight key categories: education, health care, the economy, infrastructure, opportunity, fiscal stability, crime and corrections, and natural environment. State rankings are based on how they perform in predetermined metrics, with scores weighted on citizen priorities as determined by a survey.

Metrics for the higher education rank included the number of citizens holding degrees, costs of attending college, student debt burden, and time it takes to complete a two- or four-year program.

As reported by the Tampa Bay Times, "the state recently announced a 9.5 percent increase in its college graduation rate over the last five years." It has decreased the cost of pursuing a bachelor's degree, too, reducing it to less than $10,000 after financial aid for the average student.

Under these standards, Florida has set a high bar. It beat out Washington, Wyoming, and California (which took second, third, and fourth respectively). This is the third year in a row Florida has taken the top spot, and the state sports three of the country's 100 best colleges.

"It is no surprise that U.S. News & World Report has again named Florida the top state in the nation for higher education," Governor Ron DeSantis said in a news release. "Our state colleges and universities have prioritized affordability and pathways for career and life and, as a result, they are transforming our state. I look forward to celebrating continued success as we build on this positive momentum."

Ranking the nation's education systems

However, Florida's sterling score did not carry over to PreK-12 education. It lingered in the middle of the pack, coming in at 27. Instead, Massachusetts ranked number one in primary and secondary education. These results were based on metrics such as preschool enrollment, SAT and ACT scores, standardized test scores in math and reading, and high school graduation rate.

To determine which state had the best overall education system, U.S. News & World Report then combined state scores for PreK-12 and higher education (weighing each as 50/50). In order, the top ten are:

Still room to improve

To weigh its index score, U.S. News & World Report's surveyed more than 50,000 Americans over three years. The survey asked residents in each state how they felt their governments handled key categories and where they wanted resources to be focused. The respondents had to rank each category — 1 being the most important, 8 the least.

Americans felt strongly that state governments should make education a priority (15.8 percent). Only health care received more support and just barely (16 percent). Other categories such as natural environment (8.4 percent), crime and corrections (9.9 percent), and infrastructure (12.9 percent) received less enthusiasm.

But there's still room for improvement. Graduation rates for whites, Asians, and Pacific Islanders continues to outdo rates for blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans. School funding remains tied to local property taxes, meaning schools in poor districts that need money are unlikely to get it. Higher education can be prohibitively expensive. And education is still not a right in the United States, unlike other democracies.

States like Florida and Massachusetts can serve as examples to help each state develop a more productive and charitable education system. They can keep the python sex parties, though.

During the first golden era of space exploration, we went to the Moon. Then, says Dr. Michio Kaku, we sort of dropped the ball for 50 years.

Space travel is very expensive, especially the way governments do space travel: It costs $10,000 to put a pound of anything into orbit around planet Earth.

We need to have an infusion of public and private funds. That's where billionaires such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos come into the picture. With their help, we have new energies, new strategies and, most importantly, a new vision to go back into outer space.